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Take a minute, close your eyes, and think about the word "professionalism." What comes to mind? How people look? What people say or do in your organization that makes them professional or unprofessional? It's likely that everyone who reads this will have different ideas based on their industry, organization, and even specific departments or jobs.

It's no secret that organizations have been founded and managed overwhelmingly by white males for a long time. It makes sense that ideas of what constitutes professionalism are based on the expectations of the majority who have overseen so much of the country's workforce for so long. As commitments to diversity and inclusion continue to take root and grow in many organizations, our assumptions of how professional looks and sounds begin to feel much different.

When we think about professionalism, the first thing that comes to mind is dress and appearance. Employee handbooks are seldom complete without some reference to what we wear and how we behave.

Any requirements about professional attire should be strictly grounded in business or job necessity. For example, there may be health and safety reasons that someone must wear steel-toed boots, gloves, or other protected clothing. Uniforms may also be required for specific types of jobs. Examples include law enforcement, some retail, or health care, all of which may require that customers or the public can easily identify officials or staff members.

Outdated ideas about what constitutes professionalism may lead to charges of discrimination. Overly restrictive dress codes can run afoul of Title VII's prohibition against discriminating based on national origin, race, or religion, including allegations of harassment. The ADA may provide protection for employees whose dress is an accommodation for a disability. Increasingly, states also have anti-discrimination laws that reach beyond federal law. For example, Colorado has included gender identity and gender expression as areas of protection from discrimination. Employers must have gender-neutral dress codes and allow employees to dress as the gender they identify with.

To date, some states have passed a CROWN Act, including Colorado and New Mexico. Similar laws have been enacted in municipalities across the country, including Tucson and Tempeh in Arizona. CROWN stands for Create a Respectful and Open World for Natural Hair and prohibits discrimination on the basis of one's race to include hair texture, hair type, or a protective hairstyle commonly or historically associated with race, such as braids, locs, twists, tight coils or curls, cornrows, Bantu knots, Afros, and head wraps. Employers should remain aware of the existence or progress of CROWN legislation in their states and take proactive steps to ensure Black employees, in particular, are protected.

Professionalism is more than how we dress and appear. It extends to how we communicate and interact with each other at work. Once again, employers must carefully consider what professional behavior looks and sounds like and challenge their assumptions.

Employees come to work using an array of accents, speech patterns, dialects, syntax, and jargon. From a nuts-and-bolts standpoint, taking disciplinary action against employees or terminating someone's employment based on how they speak may lead to a charge of discrimination based on race or national origin. Employers should be very wary of requirements and comments that employees "speak good English."

Displaying emotion and crying has been taboo for a long time in the American workplace. On the other end of the spectrum, the same holds true for private and reserved employees. The cultures in which people grew up can inform how they communicate and behave personally and at work. Employers who embrace inclusion and belonging will welcome wide-ranging degrees of emotional expression.

As organizations reconsider their spoken and unspoken standards of professionalism, here are some questions to ask:

• Do our standards of professionalism get in the way of attracting and retaining diverse talent?
• Do they stifle innovation and creativity?
• Do they inhibit open and honest communication?
• Are there implicit or explicit biases in how we view professionalism?

Redefining professionalism will require exploring most HR practices, including recruiting, hiring, onboarding, performance management, employee handbooks, and retention strategy.

Last, an employer's current employees can be a tremendous resource for understanding what professionalism looks like now and how it could look like in the future. It might be worth asking.